Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Are Digital "Margin Notes" Possible Yet?

Posted by Cliff on from the a-good-idea-seeking-an-implementation dept.

Stavo asks: "I'm looking for a robust, reliable personal knowledge management solution. As a professional researcher, I read a lot of text-based content. I prefer to mark up content, by underlining or adding margin notes. I also need to retrieve and search content. The low tech solution is printing the text and using a pen to mark up, then filing the papers. If I want to quote a source, I have to type the quote. With the advent of Tablet PCs and similar tech, I'd like to find a way to keep the content digital. In other words, if I download an journal article in PDF or HTML, how can I mark it up, save it, and later search/retrieve it? Shouldn't computers provide a better solution than voluminous file cabinets filled with dead trees?"

2 of 49 comments (clear)

  1. Annotea is the start of a solution by mike_sucks · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Annotea is a W3C project. To quote from the site:

    Annotea is a LEAD (Live Early Adoption and Demonstration) project enhancing the W3C collaboration environment with shared annotations.

    It provides annotation capabilities for HTML documents, and maybe XML documents, delivered in a web browser or similar UA.

    Anonzilla is a project for providing Annotea capabilities for Mozilla. Check it out!

    HTH
    /mike

    --
    -- "So, what's the deal with Auntie Gerschwitz et all?"
  2. Re:in MS Word by coaxial · · Score: 3, Interesting

    use "Track Changes"

    Oh god no! When I had a job (Don't worry, I didn't get laid off. I quit just before the implosion to go to gradschool.) I had write a design doc in Word. Track changes absolutly sucked. It couldn't merge two documents from a common ancestor at all. It said it did, but it couldn't. The only way you could get it to was to merge them one at a time.

    It was an experience I wouldn't want to repeat.